Rodolfo Margheri completed his artistic training and spent a good part of his life in Florence. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1935 after having attended the painting course with Felice Carena and the engraving course with Celestino Celestini. Two years later, he was appointed assistant to the Engraving Techniques Chair at the same academy. That same year, he won the Sanremo Prize for a fresco that was never carried out. In 1942, he was called up and served on the Amalfi Coast. After the armistice on 8 September, Margheri ended up in Sicily with his friend, the writer Giovanni Guaita. Here, in contact with an extremely backward and closed world, he actively participated in the work of rebuilding a political-union structure. With this experience, one that profoundly marked his conscience and made his moral sense stronger and more steadfast, he returned to Florence in the summer of 1945. In the heated post-war debate, Margheri found himself on the extreme left, but his reserved, aloof character kept him out of active politics. He preferred to make his voice heard through a consistent and constant commitment to art, first as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, and then as a painter. He committed the language of art to a role of commentary and meditation on human and emotional aspect and the intersection of individual and collective ways of life. During these years, he decorated the ceiling of the Rondò di Bacco in Palazzo Pitti (1946) and the frescoes in the Church of Santa Maria a Ponterosso in Figline Valdarno (Florence), (1947). In 1952, he received the commission for a large stained glass window in the apse of San Lucchese in Poggibonsi (Siena). A few years later, he was again busy with some windows for the Parish Church in Visso (Macerata) and the Parish Church in Mercatale di Vernio (Prato). In 1959, he took over technical supervision of the Stamperia Il Bisonte, working constantly to develop technical and artistic processes. In 1966, he was invited, with nine graphic works, to the Venice Biennale, perhaps the highest accolade of his career.
(Portrait of the Painter Ferrero) Rodolfo Margheri dedicated much of his work to portraiture. Self-portraits and portraits of friends, people very close to him (whose names are faithfully reported in the titles), are found throughout his entire artistic career, with portraits being a genre suitable for exploring the intimate problems of a human expression. In this portrait, the figure is seen isolated in a private moment, in front of a table covered with a white tablecloth and a single glass on top. Yet the image does not seem interested in depicting the outside world. If anything, the artist is more committed to understanding the evidence of character and psychological complexity. The execution is resolved with an imposing still, essential figure, but with strongly distinctive features. The dark, elongated eyes are almost cracks, barely releasing an inner reality that is beyond the threshold of communication, a physiognomy marked by the events of time and life.
mm 795x595
(Girl in a white shirt at a mirror) In addition to the many portraits that translated images of his many colleagues and co-workers, Margheri was known for his etchings where he achieved unparalleled technical and artistic levels. For the Tuscan master, engraving was one of the most significant expressive forms. In fact, after having taught graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, in 1959, he became artistic director of the fine art printer Il Bisonte, making his broad experience available to such great masters of the twentieth century as Giorgio de Chirico, Henry Moore, Renato Guttuso, and others. In his etchings, Margheri repeated his most treasured themes, which he had explored previously in painting.
mm 282x209